


Artful

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint just wants to read his book. Phil has other ideas. In the end, they compromise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artful

"What’re you reading?" 

"Nothing." Clint’s voice is little more than an aggravated murmur at this point, eyes moving over words, dissatisfied with the result. It’s an upsetting read, about the ghost of a lost lover returning in the mind of the narrator. Clint can sympathise; Phil’s ghost haunted Clint for months after they’d all been told Loki had killed him. Unfinished conversations, fragments of memories… All resurfacing, trying to pull Clint under. It had been hard, but Phil was back now. He wasn’t dead, never had been—or, well, not for longer than four minutes anyway. 

“ _Artful_ ,” Phil reads from the front cover. “I’ve never heard of Ali Smith.” 

"I like her." Clint shrugs. She’s difficult sometimes, Clint thinks. She’s someone he has to work hard at. Like Natasha, maybe. Although Natasha usually says what she means, to Clint at least. Sometimes Clint has no idea what Ali Smith is talking about at all… about narrative form and poetic technique. Clint’s childhood hadn’t been the most literarily formative experience. His upbringing—from his parents to the orphanage and finally to the circus—hadn’t put all that much emphasis on education, especially not something like reading for fun. It hadn’t been until S.H.I.E.L.D that Clint could even read or write properly. It hadn’t been until S.H.I.E.L.D that Clint discovered the power of the written word. So, yeah, he doesn’t always totally get writers like Ali Smith, with their winding metaphors and their enigmatic prose. But sometimes… sometimes she writes things in the exact way that words build in Clint’s head, as if she’d plucked them right from inside him.

Clint looks back down at the book and keeps reading. The narrator of the story is currently with their therapist—

 _“That must be frustrating for you_."

And how many times has Clint heard that one?

Usually he resisted all of SHIELD’s attempts to get him into a counselling session. Not after Phil, though. Not after that near-miss. He’d needed it then, even he could see that much. His brains had been scrawled all over the side walk, no discernable rhyme or reason Clint could understand. Loki had taken his mind and he had taken Phil and Clint had been so full of rage, so full of sorrow, he would have burst with it.

So, yeah, therapy had been kind of a necessity.

Then there is a turn in the story and Clint feels his interest pique. His eyes pull almost closed as he reads, squinting at the book, trying to anticipate the plot before it unfolds. But that’s why he likes Ali Smith. He can never see it coming with her; she resists all forms of guess work. Anything could happen, so Clint’s just going to have to keep reading. 

"I thought we might—"

Phil’s hands are on Clint’s thighs; it’s reassuring at first, nice and warm. Soon, though, the intention behind the action is clear. Phil presses his fingers gently into the soft skin covering the inseam of Clint’s thighs. Maybe he should have worn sweatpants—maybe that would have detracted Phil’s attention. 

Clint makes a warning sound, a hurrumph, and then relaxes back against the sofa. 

"Once I’m finished this bit." 

Phil scoffs; Clint refuses to look up but he imagines Phil rolling his eyes, the way their edges crease as he smiles. A fond smile. The smile he keeps just for Clint. And then he expects to feel Phil retreating, to feel the warmth of his body vanish as he heads for the kitchen or his little home-office, but Clint is abruptly straddled instead. 

He’s forced to look up then, over the rim of the book into Phil’s amused blue eyes, almost grey in the dull light of the room. 

"It’s late," Phil murmurs, hooking two fingers over the top of the book, thick fingers covering the inner margins and some of the words. His nails are neatly paired. Clint considers kissing Phil’s knuckles, suddenly missing the weight of long fingers in between his lips, desperately needing to suck and lick and mindlessly tongue them. 

Arousal stirs in him but he tries to quell it, if only for the few more minutes it will take to really frustrate Phil. The  _unflappable_  Phil Coulson. 

"Not that late," Clint counters, trying not to smirk. He doesn’t want to egg Phil on, doesn’t want to encourage him. He really wants to finish the book, and he could definitely do it tonight. Who knows where they might be tomorrow? Who knows what ridiculous assignment Clint might be faced with. He can’t take Ali Smith to work with him. She might ruin his focus. 

The only person he’d ever let ruin his focus would not be an abstract author thousands of miles away; it would be Phil, of course. And even then, only sometimes. When Clint needs to have his focus ruined. 

Now is not one of those times.

"What’s it about then?" Phil asks, soft and indulgent. If sex isn’t going to happen then conversation will suffice just as well. Clint’s touched. 

Until he realises he’ll have to answer the question. A dark moment rises. Clint doesn’t  _want_  to answer. He knows how guilty Phil gets about this whole being dead thing. And rightly so, or at least that’s how Clint had felt at the start. Now he understands a little more. He’s still wary, of SHEILD, of Fury… not so trusting. But he doesn’t blame Phil. And he hates knowing that Phil can’t say the same. 

But Phil cocks his head, expectantly. 

"A woman and the ghost of her dead lover. Other stuff too, there are lecture notes and Oliver Twist; it’s a bit, you know, wordy in places. I guess it’s on a college course somewhere or something, but mostly it’s about grief." 

Phil stays very still but Clint’s sure he sees a flicker in his eyes, a flinch almost. 

Clint jumps to save things, save Phil, save him from that rueful twist to his mouth that makes Phil look pained. He holds Phil’s elbows as words tumble out of his mouth.

"I just read her other stuff and then I found this and… it isn’t—"

"Would you read a bit? To me." As if clarification was needed. As if there was anyone else. 

Clint frowns. He’s not sure he’s ever read aloud like this. Not since he was six anyway and reading out the names of colours from a 1st grade homework sheet. 

But Phil edges closer over Clint’s thighs, pant-clad knees pushing back into the sofa cushions. There is a desperate need in his eyes, like this might settle something, something between them, something lingering, fraught, inside Phil. 

So Clint nods. 

"She’s with her therapist," Clint explains, trying to ground Phil in a little bit of context, eyes flicking back down to the page. He swallows down the lump in his throat, tries to quiet the nerves that are fluttering up inside his chest. He takes a breath. “‘I nodded, I pretended to do as she said. But instead of imagining her film going backwards and forwards, I found I was thinking about how much I was missing making love with you.’"

Phil chuffs out a little laugh and leans forward, knocking his nose against Clint’s. “Sounds like you.” 

"I would be less likely to zone out during debriefing if the guy doing the debriefing wasn’t doing his best to give me a raging boner with every word." 

"My apologies, obviously," Phil deadpans. 

"You are not forgiven." Clint grins, almost wolfish. "You want more?" 

Phil nods, encouraging. “Just a little.” 

Clint reads ahead and his stomach twists. He hopes he doesn’t blush. It would be ridiculous, after all their years together. To blush about sex. But there’s something strangely intimate about this, intimate in a completely different way to how they usually are. Clint feels on display. Before he continues, he takes another breath. Phil kisses his forehead. 

“‘When we made particularly good love it was as if a new place in the world, or maybe a new place  _out_ of the world, a place apart, revealed itself, a landscape just rolling itself open in my head—’”

And this is what Clint means.  _This_  is the sort of thing Ali Smith steals from inside his head, inside his heart. This is the stuff she writes that makes Clint’s heart skip a beat because he isn’t the only one feeling like this, he isn’t the only one mad in love. Slowly going insane because of Phil Coulson and every crazy feeling Phil makes him feel. Raw and exposed and vulnerable; torn apart, in two, and yet safe. So, so safe.

Clint’s fingers loosen on the book and Phil is finally able to take it from him and set it aside. 

"We make particularly good love," Phil whispers. "Wouldn’t you say?" 

Clint smirks, threading his fingers with Phil’s as if they were teenagers, caught in a web of cliche and sentimentality. 

"I don’t know," Clint says, considering. "It’s been so long." And Phil laughs outright at that because a couple of hours isn’t so long by the stretch of anyone’s imagination, least of all theirs. They’ve had to wait weeks before, months… "Maybe you could remind me."

"I’d be happy to." 


End file.
